"Whose wit can brighten up a winter's day,
And chase the splenetic dull hours away."
Give me such a man; his philosophy is worth all the dogmas, and rules, and precepts, that ever were expounded in the Academe, the Porch, or the Lycæum.
What should I be now—or, rather, where should I be—but for my good humour? Alas! perhaps sailing the Styx in company with Charon; or, not having the ferry money, wandering disconsolate upon the banks, (for it is only the good-humoured, such as Menippus, that can manage to get over passage-free.) But here I am now, a fine, fat, rubicund fellow,—and all, I say it unhesitatingly, owing to my good humour. Good humour, thou hast indeed been to me a true, and kind, and trusty benefactress! Oh! thou fair, and sweet, and lovely thing, in whatever form thou holdest communion with mortals: whether thou art an immaterial essence that blends at will with our mortal bodies or whether thou art something more loving and palpable,—that light, blithe, blue-eyed maid,
"Whom lovely Venus at a birth,
With two sister graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;"
or whether a wild spirit, a lovely Ariel of the air, thou transfusest thyself into all the beautiful things of this world,—the green fields, and the silvery streams, and the sunny skies,—and then, rich with the sheen of their loveliness, comest into the presence-chamber of the mind, fixest thyself in the great senate of the senses, cheering and gladdening all their emotions!—whatever thou art, good humour,—be thou a bodiless essence, a lovely maid, a lively spirit, or any other modification of the mysterious and the beautiful, I love thee; love thee as dearly as ever Orpheus loved his Eurydice, Petrarch his Laura, or Waller his Sacharissa. Thou art the harbinger of comfort, the inductress of joy, the dove that bringest to mortals the olive of happiness and peace. Without thee what were life?—a dull, dreary, uninteresting scene,—a bare, bleak, barren, joyless, empyreanless——
Stop—stop—stop—stop!—halloo, Pegasus! where the devil are you going to? Soho! softly; not quite so high if you please; much as you admire good humour, do, pray! stay a little nearer to the confines of this "visible diurnal sphere."